Carol FelsenthalOn Politics

It hasn’t been a great few days for President Obama’s Chief of Staff Bill Daley. He has been sliced, diced, dismissed, dissed in Politico, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, not to mention the Huffington Post and New York magazine. In all of these publications, Daley is portrayed as overly corporate, hierarchical, averse to the down-and-dirty of politics…

Reading Politico last month, I came upon an item about a WVON host going to D.C. for the dedication of the Martin Luther King National Memorial. While there, he would interview the president in the Oval Office. I called the station and discovered that the lucky radio guy was Matt McGill, the morning drive host for the city’s only black-owned and -operated…

The graying of Obama has become a theme of this presidency: to his supporters each patch of gray reflects another piece of the mess that George W. Bush left his successor to clean up; to his detractors the gray reflects the anxious condition of a man in way over his head. I sought the opinion of Dr. Charles Zugerman, associate professor of clinical dermatology at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University…

Skipping President Obama’s speech last night, Rep. Joe Walsh hosted a small-business forum at Schaumburg’s Prairie Center for the Arts. Yesterday, I posted part one of my Q&A with the 8th District congressman. Here, part two of our conversation, in which he talks about growing up in an Irish Catholic family, why he switched his stance on abortion, who his closest friends are in Congress, and …

When President Obama takes the mic tonight for a jobs speech before a joint session of Congress tonight, Congressman Joe Walsh will not be in attendance. Instead, he’ll be flying home to host a “small business job forum” in Schaumburg, part of his suburban Chicago 8th District…

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When Bill Daley took over Rahm Emanuel’s job as President Obama’s chief of staff, the conventional wisdom had it that, finally, an adult was in the room. It may be too soon to judge Daley’s performance in the job, but he certainly earns a low grade for the dustup over the scheduling of Obama’s upcoming jobs speech…

On Eight Forty-Eight this morning, WBEZ aired its interview with Rahm Emanuel, in commemoration of the mayor’s first 100 days in office. The discussion, hosted by Alison Cuddy, was taped Wednesday night at an event cohosted by the radio station and the Chicago History Museum…

On Friday, I posted part one of my interview with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, in which she promoted her new jobs bill and slammed the Republicans. Here’s part two, in which she discusses why she broke down during a recent meeting with constituents, how middle-class America is disappearing, and more…

Jan Schakowsky, is an old-fashioned liberal, definitely left of center and proud of it. In a rally last week at the Goudy Elementary, a CPS school, she previewed her “Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act,” a bill unabashedly modeled on FDR’s WPA (Work Progress Administration). In a telephone conversation Thursday from her vacation home in Michigan City, Indiana, Schakowsky told me…

The issue of redistricting congressional maps is back in the news, with the League of Women Voters of Illinois filing a lawsuit on Tuesday claiming that the new maps are unconstitutional. In July, 11 of 12 members of Illinois’s GOP delegation filed a federal suit challenging the new map. Congressman Tim Johnson, of the 15th District, was the sole Republican lawmaker not to join in the lawsuit. “I’m too busy serving my constituents…

With the United States Postal Service losing $8.5 billion last year, some 3,653 post offices nationwide (out of 31,871) are being reviewed for possible closing. Illinois carries the dubious distinction of having the most potential closures—176. Chicago gets whacked with the possible closing of 12 stations, and all of them sit in the congressional districts of either Danny Davis or Bobby Rush…

Ed Klein, the former editor of The New York Times Magazine (1977-87) and foreign editor of Newsweek, was in Chicago this week to conduct interviews for his latest biography—this one focusing on Barack and Michelle Obama and their friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and their interactions in the White House…

While Rep. Randy Hultgren thinks Speaker John Boehner and his lieutenants did a masterful job in this messy debt-ceiling debate, in the end, the freshman Republican congressman didn’t vote Boehner’s way—he was one of five members of the Illinois delegation who voted “no” on the legislation…

With one Illinois governor in prison and another waiting to go, the current gov, Pat Quinn, seems remarkably tone deaf to charges that he is rewarding his political benefactors with cushy board jobs. His appointment on Wednesday of 41-year-old attorney Jennifer Burke—daughter of Alderman Ed Burke, next to Rahm the biggest foot in city politics—to the Illinois Pollution Control Board seems utterly over the top, even reckless…

It’s often said that Washington is “Hollywood for ugly people.” With that caveat, and given the agonizing stalemate over lifting the debt ceiling, it’s a nice distraction to look at the “50 Most Beautiful People in Washington” list, published annually since 2004 by the oh-so-serious The Hill, which covers D.C. in minute detail. At number five, the highest ranking local is…